Sweep-or-weep series against Phillies in ’78 was a Pittsburgh baseball highlight
Kent Tekulve
Bert Blyleven
Randy Learch
”Ed Ott is going to try and come to third. He’s going to hit the dirt. He is safe. The ball rolled into the dugout. The Pirates win. The Pirates win. The Pirates win. . . The Pirates are still alive. This crowd is gaga here. Holy, Toledo. What a finish,” Milo Hamilton – The Voice of the Pirates, September 29, 1978.Sweep or weep.
That was the Pirates’ predicament heading into the final series of the 1978 season against the rival and two-time defending National League East Division champion Philadelphia Phillies at Three Rivers Stadium.
Pittsburgh, 11 1/2 games behind the Phillies on Aug. 12 and 10 games under .500 in fourth place, rallied with a furious charge to close within 3 1/2 games going into the final series. They had to sweep the Phillies to assure themselves of a tie at the top of the division and put themselves in position to win the crown by winning a makeup game in Cincinnati the following Monday.
Sweep or weep.
The Pirates entered the Sept. 29, twinight doubleheader having won 22 consecutive games at Three Rivers Stadium, four short of the major league record. They had won 18 of 26 games during the final month of the season, many times in strange and unthinkable ways.
The Phillies had struggled down the stretch and were not the heavy-hitting powerhouse they were in the 101-win 1977 season. The Phillies lost nine of 12 games in late August. Philadelphia’s inconsistency allowed the Pirates to close to within one game on Sept. 19, but Philadelphia steadied itself just enough to have to win only one of four games against the hard-charging Pirates.
“We had been written off,” said Pirates’ closer Kent Tekulve. “It was exciting that we had put ourselves in position to still be able to win the championship. Not too many people thought the Pirates would be playing meaningful baseball in late September of 1978. Silly things happened that probably shouldn’t have happened.”
Those silly, crazy things continued.
In the first game of the doubleheader, the Phillies struck for two runs in the fifth inning off starter Bert Blyleven. The Pirates answered with four runs in the sixth inning off Philadelphia’s Dick Ruthven. The big blow was Willie Stargell’s three-run homer.
The Phillies responded with two more runs in the seventh off Blyleven as right fielder Bake McBride hit a two-run double to tie the score.
Tekulve and Tug McGraw pitched scoreless eighth innings to set the stage for the dramatic ninth inning as the Pirates tried to stay alive.
Tekulve retired McBride and Larry Bowa to end the top of the ninth.
Enter left-handed hitting catcher Ed Ott, who would face right-handed pitcher Ron Reed – on in relief of the lefty McGraw.
Ott lofted a fly ball to right centerfield. McBride looked like he had the ball measured but hesitated as Garry Maddox, running over from center, approached. They both backed away and the ball bounced off the turf and high into the air. By the time Maddox retrieved it, Ott was racing to third base. Maddox’s throw was wide of the bag, eluded Mike Schmidt and rolled into the photographers’ box besides the Phillies’ dugout. Dead ball. Ott raced home with third-base coach Jose Lonnett sprinting right behind him. Ott had a gift triple, the Gold Glove Maddox an error, and the Pirates had a 5-4 win and life in the championship chase.
The 45,134 screaming Pirates fans were rocking Three Rivers Stadium and Pittsburgh was in a state of euphoria.
Pirates manager Chuck Tanner, who refused to give up on his team, gloried in the victory with his team at home plate.
“I just remember how loud it was,” said Blyleven, a member of the Pirates’ starting staff in 1978 after being acquired during the offseason from Texas. “The crowds were loud in the postseason in ’79 but not as loud as that night. The crowds at the Metrodome during the World Series (in Minnesota) are the only louder crowds that I can remember.”
Balkoff win
If that finish wasn’t enough, the result of the nightcap was even more improbable.
In the second game, the Pirates fell behind 1-0 in the second inning when left fielder Greg Luzinski hit a home run. Pittsburgh faced the daunting task of facing ace lefty Steve Carlton.
Bruce Kison held Philadelphia at bay through five innings and then turned the game in the bottom half of the fifth inning. Kison hit a stunning two-out home run to tie the score, 1-1.
Carlton shut down the Pirates through the eighth inning. Grant Jackson relieved Kison in the seventh and thwarted a threat by striking out Tim McCarver and Ted Sizemore. Tekulve got the final out of the top of the eighth and Carlton struck out Omar Moreno in the bottom of the inning.
Schmidt hit a two-out, double in the top of the ninth but Tekulve retired McCarver on a fly to left.
Leading off the bottom of the ninth, Dave Parker laced a double to center field and went to third on another error by Maddox. Philadelphia manger Danny Ozark ordered Carlton to intentionally walk Bill Robinson and Stargell.
Warren Brusstar came on to face Phil Garner. His first pitch was a ball in the dirt. Parker was toying with Brusstar by faking moves toward home in an effort to distract. Brusstar started his windup and Parker faked a dash toward home. Brusstar stopped in mid motion and was called for a balk.
The Pirates had won again, this time 2-1. They were 1-1/2 behind the Phillies, halfway to the needed sweep. They had won 24 consecutive home games.
“I was just a fan then growing up in central Pennsylvania hoping the Pirates would win that doubleheader and had my brothers drive me to Three Rivers Stadium for the Saturday afternoon game,” said Greg Brown, now the Pirates’ longtime play-by-play announcer. “I was a senior in high school engrossed in this race. I was fanatical. That was the greatest night of my life to that point. That’s how much of a Pirates fan I was.”
Tekulve said the entire night was strange.
“I got two gift (pitching) wins,” Tekulve said. “Those were two unbelievable endings. Those are things that were not supposed to be happening. We knew that something special was going on. These kinds of wins were not normal. We were winning in ways that were way off the chart.”
He wondered how the proud Phillies were feeling and what their mental state was at that point.
“They were a great team,” Tekulve said. “After the series they admitted they never stopped watching us even when they were so far ahead of us in mid-August. There was a rivalry, and on the field, we hated each other. But there was a lot of mutual respect.”
The Pirates and Phillies dominated the NL East through the 1970s. Pittsburgh won six titles and Philadelphia won three. The New York Mets were the only other team to win the division (1973) during the decade.
Longtime Pirates and MLB beat writer, John Perrotto, was just a freshman at Western Beaver High School in 1978. But he remembers the doubleheader.
“The doubleheader was one of the greatest moments in Pittsburgh baseball history,” he said.
Lynford Lynch and his wife, Cathleen, met after work that day and headed to Three Rivers Stadium. It’s two games Lynch won’t forget.
“Those were the weirdest endings of games you’ll see,” Lynch recalled. “We sat in left-center field. It was just goofy how both of those games ended.
“The atmosphere was unbelievable. I thought they had a chance. But I never thought it would happen like that. It was magical that night at Three Rivers Stadium.
“Cathy parked on the North Side. Traffic was stopped everywhere after the game. People were hugging and celebrating. I remember some people singing the old “Beat’em Bucs” battle cry made famous by Benny Benack. Honestly, there wasn’t a quiet moment in the stadium that night and the scene afterwards was pretty crazy. It was a hell of a night. I’ll never forget it.”
Time to weep
The question going into Saturday was could the Phillies forget the meltdown on such a short turnaround?
The Pirates had defeated their ace. They had the look of a team of destiny.
The scene returned to normalcy Sept. 30.
The Pirates, who struggled attendancewise in 1978, drew only 28,905 that day. They were easily outdrawn by college football across town as the North-Carolina-Pitt game drew 50,439 – a 20-16 Panthers victory at Pitt Stadium.
The 2:20 p.m. start time of Pirates-Phillies didn’t take long to produce some answers.
Former Pirate Richie Hebner – a member of eight division championship teams in his career – put Philadelphia on the scoreboard with a two-out double off starter Don Robinson.
The Phillies were not rattled. What happened moments later could have shook a lesser team to the edge of implosion.
After Frank Taveras grounded out, Philadelphia starter Randy Lerch walked Moreno, and gave up singles to Parker and Robinson. Stargell followed with a grand slam. It was 4-1 Pirates.
“Incredible,” Brown said of the blast. “In some ways it was all so hard to grasp.”
Said Tekulve, “Sitting there, you just had to wonder what (the Phillies) were thinking. Everything is going our way. This just wasn’t normal.”
Indeed it was not. What followed proved it.
The Phillies added a run in the second and fourth innings on solo home runs by Lerch – the starting pitcher.
They added three more in the sixth when Luzinski hit a three-run home run off Jackson and four in the eighth, fueled by a three-run double by Hebner off Tekulve. It was 10-4 Phillies.
“Even then, we felt we’d find a way,” Tekulve said.
Almost.
Lerch, Brusstar and McGraw blanked the Pirates from the second through the eighth.
Ott singled to lead off the bottom of the ninth off McGraw. Pinch-hitter Cito Gaston singled to left. Tavares bunted for a hit. Bases loaded.
Moreno drove in Ott with a grounder that forced Tavares at second. Moreno stole second – while down five – and Parker followed with two-run single. The lead was just three.
Reed relieved McGraw and was greeted by a Bill Robinson single that scored Parker, who had advanced to second on an error. It was 10-8.
Stargell, who was one of four future Hall of Fame players in that series (Carlton, Schmidt and Blyleven were the others), was the last guy Philadelphia wanted at the plate.
“We believed we were going to win,” Tekulve said.
But Stargell struck out as did Garner. The game and the Pirates’ unlikely quest to win the division title was over.
“It was hard to believe it was over,” Tekulve said. “Because of how we had comeback and the so many different, unnatural ways we had won, we really did think we were going to pull it off.
“We knew how good the Phillies were and that they had marquee players. The ’78 season really set up our World Series championship in 1979. We were intent on not falling so far be-hind them. We finally got past the point of not believing we could beat them. We felt we were now the better team.
“That mindset set up the 1979 season. Those final two months of 1978 really helped re-ignite interest in Pirates baseball. People cared again. The Pirates mattered.”